The Rheinischer Golfclub Köln was the venue of the first golf blogger summit in Germany. I mean, at least three of the possible 7 to 10 german golf bloggers attended the club last saturday: Karsten, Dirk and yours truly.

The club is relatively new and features an 18 hole course, a six three hole practice course and a wide driving range and practice facilities. The Cologne-Bonn airport isn’t far, so should you have a stopover or when your connecting flight takes a little longer, just hop over and hit some balls. The newest addition to the club is the colonial-style clubhouse, offering a nice atmosphere in the bar and restaurant and overwiewing the 9th and 18th green.

The course has a lenght of 5595 meters from yellow, not the longest course, but it plays very comfortable: with a solid tee shot I had a chance of making my second shot onto the green on most of the par 4′s. Problem was that I didn’t make solid tee shots, but thats another story.

The first holes played rather easy, but then the fairways started to get a little more narrow and the risk of placing the balls in the trees and bushes alongside almost every fairway increased. Karsten was right when he warned me ahead of our round as he told me to avoid the bushes. They are like water, your ball is very certainly lost in them.

Real water only comes into play on the 9th and 18th, making them the two hardest holes on the course. I stayed clear of it, but Karsten and Dirk had their troubles on the 18th. An other challenge was the wind. We had a good breeze blowing almost all day and we had it head on on the short par3 14th. With 105 meters in length, you’d normally pick your PW or 9iron, but the green is very exposed and thus the wind comes into play pretty hard. We should have picked one ore two clubs more as we all left our balls short. Karsten told us he once had to use his 6iron on that hole as the wind was so strong.

We had a very fun round and it was my treat at the clubhouse, had I shot two ladies and lost my matchplay against Karsten. But hey, it was his home turf and I wasn’t playing with my regular equipment. So the challenge is on for a rematch in Berlin, right?

As for the Rheinischer Golfclub Köln, it is a nice course and worth the trip. We payed 45,00 EUR for the weekend greenfee, the drinks at the clubhouse we’re affordable too.

Rheinischer Golfclub Köln e.V.
Urbanusstraße
51147 Köln

Tel.: 0 22 03 / 96 14 57
Fax: 0 22 03 / 96 14 58
E-Mail: sekretariat@rgck.de
http://www.rgck.de/

Monday, 06. November 2006
15.30 CNN Living Golf

Friday, 10. November 2006
19.30 CNN Living Golf

Sunday, 12. November 2006
07.45 RTL2 Caddyshack II